This time real problems, I blew up my Disk Accelerator!

[Tuomas]

damnit. Hi there again. I seem to be starting these threads all the time. But this time it's my own computer, and I'm afraid I lost everything.

The thing is, I turned on the computer on monday morning to buy some tickets to the Jethro Tull show on march here, and it worked fine, then I went off to uni. When I got back, a few hours later, the computer wouldn't proceed from the BIOS, the stage, where it checks the memory. This sometimes happens, but usually it has helped, when I reboot. Now it just wouldn't check the memeory and wouldn't proceed.

In the end it made these cracking sounds in my PSU, and the front panel started beeping. I opened the case, and noticed that my ATA 133 disk accelerator (if that's what it's called, the black square chip there) was all black and hot, and I could smell smoke. After that nothing worked.

I figured, it's a problem with the Mobo, so I tried moving things like my PSU, my AMD processor, and my HD to another computer that my friend brought here just today. I was unable to run XP from my HD and basically the only thing I could do was to put the original HD of the new computer set and instal XP on it. Then I added my old HD to the IDE1 as device1 and as slave, but running the XP from the device0, the original HD, it recognises my C-drive and my E-drive, but my H-drive, which had all my music, texts, compositions, AGS projects, images, photos, my work, everything, it can't read. It just states "this drive has not been formatted, would you like Windows to format it now?". But I don't want it formatted, I want to get my files back.

Booting from the old drive, my genuine drive that I transfered tothis and tried as master at first leads nowhere. My keyboard works fine in BIOS, figuring out from where to boot the machine, but as it boots from HDD-0, that is my older HD, it goes to the well known screen where it says windows wasn't shut down properly, and I should choose between normal startup or safe-mode, but I can't select anything the cursor won't move, so it starts up in the basic mode after 30 seconds and all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor.

What's there to do? I really can't afford to lose any of my things there, OK, 25Gb of music isn't that much, but all my work and photos, my music and my writings, and especially my AGS project that's further done than anyone knows... If anyone could help me, please, be so kind. I'm running out of ideas.

Oh, and one thing... setting jumpers on my HDs, what does the "Cable Select" mean exactly?

[LUniqueDan]

'Cable select' just means that The HD will be Master or slave accordingly to is position on the IDE cable.

Knowing that :

1- Check your jumpers again. Maybe your master need a jumper or you putted it into 'master with no slave' or something else. (EDIT: Avoid putting the master on the lower position of the cable, some motherboard hates  that)

2- Re-start your computer- Access the Bios and check if it recognizes your drive. if not re-run self detect (or whatever it's called in your bios utility) 2-3times.

3- If you have your XP cds - You can try to repair your old one. Take care not to format it.

4- As usual : try accessing your XP HDD with a Linux OS. No need to install just run it from the cd. Then save your data if he see the drive.

Good luck.

[Tuomas]

Yeah.

Nr.1 - I can't be sure of these jumpers you know. There are thousands of combinations and none of them make sense to me I'll draw an image to make it clear what I mean.



Nr.2 - The drive is always recognised, as primary master or primary slave depending on how it's located.

Nr.3 - As said, I installed XP on the other drive. while I have only the old HD connected, and I boot from CD-rom, it asks as "To boot from CD, press any key" and waits for a while. I press a key, and it goes to the black windows failure screen where, again, I'd have to choose between normal startup or safe-mode, but can't. So basically when I'm using only my old HD, it's as if it wouldn't read the XP-CD at all, and wouldn't boot because of the HD, and Windows wouldn't start up either. The CD works fine with current settings, but only to fix errors on the new HD, that is the master.

Nr.4 - I could download Ubuntu and burn it on a CD. I should hope it wouldn't do as it does now, and just plainly ignore the CD-rom, as a primary boot up device.

Please, someone At least help me understand these jumpers, and what those 16/15 heads, and all those mean.

[Khris]

Nr. 1:
You can safely ignore all the 32GB clip / 15 heads / whatnot stuff, that's just to get the drive to work with old motherboards that won't recognize HDs with a capacity of more than 32GB, etc.

Use the topmost diagram for both HDs:
Samsung: one vertical jumper @ MA or SL, depending on whether it's connected as master or slave.
Deskstar: two vertical jumpers, one at the far right, the other one at the far left for master or next to the other one for slave.

To use cable select you'd need a special cable (which you probably don't have, so ignore that).

If the BIOS recognizes the drive, it's only faulty on a logical level, not a physical one. Use a decent recovery program, hook up the drive to a second computer and try to recover as much as you can.

Nr.3:
if the "To boot from CD, press any key" message is displayed, the CD's boot sector is fine; if you press a key and the PC still boots from HD, the rest of the CD isn't.

Nr. 4:
If the PC won't boot from a CDROM at all, you either need to change the boot order in the BIOS settings or recheck that the CD is actually bootable.
If your motherboard is fairly recent, it can boot from a USB stick; there are lite versions of certain Linux distributions specifically made for USB sticks.

If it does boot from a CDROM (and as I said the message indicates it will in theory), there's also the Ultimate Boot CD; very handy for dealing with all sorts of boot / HD trouble.

[Tuomas]

Thanks for the advice friends, I got it working now.

In the end, the ridiculous problem that I had was actually, that in the BIOS settings USB mouse and USB keyboard were both disabled But I couldn't have known that... They worked all well in the BIOS, but after booting, it asked if I wanted to boot from CD, told me to press a key. Well I thought I did, but evidently I hadn't, since the USB keyboard got disabled at that point. Hence the safe-mode selection not working too. I feel pretty silly.

Nevertheless it doesn't explain the Windows CD working with the other HD as master. Well, after getting it all worked up I started the XP-fix that the CD has, and after fixing it, it asked for an VIAAGP1.SYS file, which it couldn't find. I called my friend, asked him to google it, and according to them I could have just skipped it. But the install program refused to skip, it rebooted twice. third time it worked though, I got past it, and here I am!

I formatted the other HD with the new Windows, this old one works better for me. And, I got my audiofiles and all that stuff back, so yay.

So here's a new problem: I switched my CPU from the old computer to this one. Couldn't fit the metallic cooling thing, so I used the old one, but screwed in my better, quieter fan. Seems to handle it ok. The only problem is, I'm 99% sure, that my CPU was called AMD Athlon XP 2200+. In BIOS, and at the computer properties, well, it says AMD Athlon XP 1500+ 1,35GHz, which is remarkably less than what it was before. I'm not sure how this could be possible... Any ideas?

[Tuomas]

Hiya, it's me again. This is becoming my own tech forum soon.

I'm just having a problem. My computer won't start up. It goess all the way to the starting up window xp screen and then I get a bluescreen. Sometimes it goes further, like today, I was able to start up my computer, chat on msn, and only after trying to watch the superbowl on TVants, it didn't work. Nor after that actually, I'm here using safe mode. The bluescreen says MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION, and I recon it's got a problem with my mobo or some hardware. Well, I tried a new PSU, and new gfx card, just my main HD, none helped. I supposed the faulty hardware could be my RAM, but as it seems, BIOS has no problem calculating the RAM in the startup. On the other hand, it can't find my slave HD anymore after i unplugged it and retraced my steps plugging it back in. So something's fishy here.

I'll be able to watch the game, luckily, on safe-mode, but without sound because safe mode doesn't allow sound (a sad thing to notice atm). The quietness is killing me, when I can see all these people talking on the screen

There's an option, where it loads XP from the latest, working setup, just below the safe-mode selection. How does that work? Whenever I have a problem and reload, try it, it does nothing or just gets stuck... any idea what the problem could be with anythign, I'm clueless here :'(

[Peder 🚀]

All I can say is start taking backups! .

Cant help you with your problem though I am afraid .

[Mantra of Doom]

 I've googled the error you got and the article I found says this:

0x0000009C: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
(Click to consult the online MSDN article.)
This is a hardware issue: an unrecoverable hardware error has occurred. The parameters have different meanings depending on what type of CPU you have but, while diagnostic, rarely lead to a clear solution. Most commonly it results from overheating, from failed hardware (RAM, CPU, hardware bus, power supply, etc.), or from pushing hardware beyond its capabilities (e.g., overclocking a CPU).

    * Error Message: STOP: 0x0000009C... {KB 329284} Win XP
    * Understanding and Troubleshooting the Stop 0x0000009C Screen {KB 162363} Win NT4, Win 2000

Maybe the processor is overheating? Have you tried opening up the side of the case and blowing a fan in there? When you changed processors and heat sinks, did you apply a new coat of thermal paste? Is the heatsink fan spinning? Have you tried going into selective startup to see if it'll start windows? Might be something to try during half time.


The "Last known good configuration" in windows is basically the last settings that Windows believes are stable, but if that doesn't work anymore, then something weird might be going on with the hardware.

[Huw Dawson]

I know how to solve that AMD Athlon XP problem!

Go into your BIOS, find the section that controls the FSB of your Processor and the RAM and stuff. Look for a setting which will say "100Mhz" as a value or something like that - it will probably be below a description of your processor. That's the Front Serial Bus (FSB) of the processor. When you set the BIOS to default by resetting the jumper, you'll have set the FSB to a safely low value. Go to that setting and you should be able to clock it to certain FSBs - 100, 133, 166 and maybe 200 if you're lucky, without going into a manual overclocking mode. Set it to the next highest number from which you started, and save the settings and boot into windows. Carry on like this until you reach the top or your computer fails to boot at all. You should have your processor right back to normal.

- Huw

EDIT: You should buy a new computer.

[Tuomas]

[quote author=MantraofDoom link=topic=36649.msg482822#msg482822
Maybe the processor is overheating? Have you tried opening up the side of the case and blowing a fan in there? When you changed processors and heat sinks, did you apply a new coat of thermal paste? Is the heatsink fan spinning? Have you tried going into selective startup to see if it'll start windows? Might be something to try during half time.
[/quote]

It's overheating all right. I've got it all open here, with 3 fans now blowing, and it's working all right, I guess. It shouldn't though. No, I didn't apply thermal paste, couldn't find any atm. But as far as I know, it shouldn't heat up like this. I'm using Opera and TVAnts at the same time and it goes all the way to 70C and freezes /:

Also, thanks Huw, about the Athlon XP, I'm now using an Athlon 1000 for a while, that's the one that's heating. The XP 2200+ that didn't work burned... Hmm, call me slow, but it seems like a thing with the mobo, if I've just bornt a CPU and now my CPU is overheating.

EDIT: Also, as things go, they just start working... I turned my secondary HD upside-down and it started working again. The problem after some examination seemed to be the IDE cable having some contact error of some kind. I'm glad I have at least 10 of those because for some reason I always keep them.

EDIT2: But what worries me now is, the AMD Athlon XP 2200+ that I'm getting tomorrow... Is it safe for me to apply it, if the last one was burnt? Perhaps I'll have to readjust my 3 CPU fans Any idea where to get some thermal paste, all I've got is toothpaste. Also, I have 3 of these "hedgehogs"... Heat-sinks, I suppose... One is the Silentbreeze 2, that I bought earllier for quieter use, I think it's copper. Then I have two that fit my current mobo, the SilentBreeze is too big. The other is aluminium, and the other one is black. That's all I know of them. They're supposedly cheap. Would aluminium be a better choise for the heat-sink?

EDIT3: And yeah, I'll buy a new computer/parts to build one from as soon as I get my funds from the library. Now I just need this to get my work done.

[Mantra of Doom]

Copper is good for passive cooling (without a fan) and aluminum is better with active cooling (with fan) but both are very good. You really need some thermal paste in between the heatsink and the chip. It not only creates a good seal locking out air between the surface of the chip and the bottom of the heatsink.

If the cooler is brand new, it might have some pre-applied... but if it isn't new or it's been used before it is no longer good. My advice is to get some arctic silver or the best equivalent you can find at your local computer parts shop. Get some rubbing alcohol and some lint-free wipes and clean the surface of the processor as well as the bottom of the heatsink.

A dab of thermal paste is all you need, think about half a grain of rice and apply it to the center of the top of the processor. Take a credit card or any other flat plastic card and spread a thin layer all over the core. Then carefully stick down the heatsink. It will take a day or so of the computer to be on for the paste to "burn in", but you should start seeing a vast temperature improvement.

Hope it works out for you. I've actually burned out a few parts and learned some things the hard way. It might not be too late to save the processor.

[m0ds]

Spoiler

Thank fuck you weren't talking about the LHC!

[close]

[Khris]

Yeah, leaving out the thermal paste is pretty much a death sentence. But make sure you don't use too much, it contains metal i.e. is a conductor.

[Tuomas]

What did I do to deserve this? I'm so going to get a laptop.

My computer went all slow and disgustingly unable to even load simple websites for some reason. i thought I'd reboot, and while rebooting, my secondary HD started making a sound as if it were a broken vinyl spinning around and the needle just jumping back on every spin. BIOS couldn't find it, and I had to take it out. I have my photos still there, but what's more, I've just got 5 hours work of german-finnish-german translations for the uni plus my texts that were to be published and all the survivor + x-files episodes I had downloaded.

Why the hell, everytime I fix this something else occurs? Is the computer just too old, and finally falling apart? Just 3 days ago I got the processor cooling under control and was finally using this with no problem what so ever. First time in 2 weeks there were 3 days without new problems. Now this shit.

Has anyone broken a HD? I know you have. What do you reckon, can some of the files still be salvaged?

No, didn't solve the connection problem, it's still all fucked up. And please don't lecture about back-ups. I couldn't possibly back up 40 gigabytes of stuff. Otherwise I wouldn't use a bloody HD but just shitloads of DVDs to save my stuff on...

[Mantra of Doom]

I've broken hard drives before. Take it out of the computer. If it sounds like the spinner is stuck, carefully knock on the drive to see if you can loosen the arm. Plug it back into the computer and see if that works long enough to back up the important files.

Also try hooking the drive up in the computer upside-down, try it as both master and slave. I've also heard that if you put the drive in a zip bag and stick it in the freezer, you might get enough time to copy your important files... though most people think this is just a myth.